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Jazz Articles | Future
Roxy Coss: Standing Out
All About Jazz: You have recently released a new CD, Chasing the Unicorn (Posi-Tone, 2017), just a year after the release of Restless Idealism (Origin, 2016). Albums are like a snapshot of a timeframe, how has that musical image changed in a year? Roxy Coss: More back story is it was recorded more than a year apart, even though they were released a year apart, so there was actually more time between recordings, almost two years. When I ...
read moreIn Gardens 2017 - Avant Jazz Outdoors in New York City
While the NYC-based artist lead co-operative Arts For Art might be best known for putting on the annual Vision Festival, that's by no means the full extent of its activities. One regular event among the year's schedule is the In Gardens concert series. As the name suggests, this entails presenting music in public open spaces in New York City. In 2017 the series comprised four weekends of music presented free of charge across a range of locations in Manhattan, of ...
read moreJane Getter Premonition: ON Tour
With the release of ON (Madfish/Snapper, 2015)--the debut album with her newly minted Premonition band--guitarist Jane Getter completed her move from the funk/fusion guitar workouts of her first two albums (1997's Jane and 2005's See Jane Run) towards a more progressive leaning which began with Three (Alternity, 2012). It's a move that the New York-based Getter has managed with considerable success--no doubt, to some extent, the result of her husband and only constant across all of her solo recordings, keyboardist ...
read moreLeon Russell: On a Distant Shore
In the same way that the death of my Aunt Irene in the early 1990s showed me Father Time was coming for my immediate family, did I realize the same fate awaited my musical heroes when Frank Zappa was shown the door about the same time. This past year has been especially hard with the deaths of Chuck Berry, Gregg Allman, and, now, Leon Russell. Russell was one of those artists who got old all at once. It is easier ...
read moreHenry Kaiser: Friends & Heroes: Guitar Duets
There a real Smörgåsbord of pieces on Henry Kaiser's Friends & Heroes: Guitar Duets. They are stylistically varied improvisational vignettes ranging from the eccentric “Three Languages" with Fred Frith to the heavy electric blues of “A Mighty Fire" with Knut Reiersrud. There's also prog(-ish) rock on “Harmony Jam" with Nels Cline and there's a kind of electronic serialism on “All Aboard For Futureseville" with Jim O'Rourke. For sheer sublimity though, “The Distant Thunder" would be hard to beat, Debashish Bhattacharaya ...
read moreMiriodor: Signal 9
Here, the influential French-Canadian prog rock outfit Miriodor releases its 9th album. Since its formation in 1980, the band has been nestled within the Rock in Opposition movement alongside cutting-edge ensembles such as Henry Cow (UK), Art Zoyd (France) and Univers Zero (Belgium). Hence, the premise behind much of this was in response to the music industry shunning rock-based units that elevated matters into highly artistic or unorthodox art forms. It's more about a team-based approach. You won't ...
read moreJacques Lesure: For the Love of You
For one to whom almost every well-strummed guitar sounds basically the same, an honest appraisal of any guitar-led group must begin with other earmarks such as group interplay, individual dexterity, choice of material and over-all level of musicianship. Happily, guitarist Jacques Lesure's latest recording, For the Love of You, scores high in every respect, making the album a pleasure to hear and enjoy. Lesure, a Detroit native whose jazz roots can be traced to such masters as ...
read moreHarris Eisenstadt: Recent Developments
How do you pass the tedium of a long haul flight? Catch up on sleep, or take in those films you meant to watch but never got round to viewing? Few of us spend the time as productively as Canadian drummer Harris Eisenstadt who sketched out the main elements of his Recent Developments suite on the return home from tour. In spite of the prosaic titling the performance by a stellar nine strong band more than matches the standard set ...
read moreTomas Fujiwara: Triple Double
Drummer Tomas Fujiwara is all over the progressive jazz map the past several years as a member of Thumbscrew with guitarist Mary Halvorson and bassist Michael Formanek amid support duties for poll-winning flutist Nicole Mitchell and a host of disparate projects and recordings. Here, Fujiwara assembles a double trio lineup, featuring Halvorson and other notables that also shines a bright light on his shrewd compositional prowess and strong leadership skills, as the band projects an uplifting modality throughout. Simply put, ...
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